Ekphrasis - Gabriel Tinti in Los Angeles
Willem DaFoe reading ‘Confessions’ by Gabriele Tinti in the Pantheon.
EKPHRASIS
A LECTURE BY GABRIEL TINTI
On Wednesday 24th of April at the LA Public Library a group of passionate poetry lovers gathered to listen to and pay homage to the Italian poet Gabriele Tinti.
For anyone who has never come across this word, here’s the webster dictionary meaning:
A literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art.
Although "ekphrasis" (also spelled "ecphrasis") is a relatively new entry in our dictionary, the practice of using words to comment on a piece of visual art is an ancient one. One of the earliest and most commonly cited forms of ekphrasis occurs in The Iliad, when Homer provides a long and discursive account of the elaborate scenes embossed on the shield of Achilles. It should be no surprise, then, that the term ekphrasis derives from Greek, where it literally means "description" and was formed by combining the prefix ex- ("out") with the verb "phrazein" ("to point out or explain"). "Ekphrasis" first appeared in English in the early 18th century.
Tinti gave a lecture on his poetry with a selection of videos of readings of his poems by Willem Dafoe, Abel Ferrara, & Robert Davi, to name a few. These videos are the documentation of a series inspired by ancient and modern myths. Following the lecture Tinti and Chelo Montoya from LACMA discussed Ekphrasis and poetry. A truly inspiring event for poetry lovers.
Ekphrasis indeed!
Ecce Homo by Gabriele Tinti - Read by Abel Ferrara
With the support of The Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles in collaboration with The Laboratory Arts Collective & The Hoxton.
very laboratory